In a resounding victory for the pharmaceutical industry, the Quebec Court of Appeal held that the province’s consumer protection law does not apply to the sale of prescription drugs, jettisoning a legal avenue a growing number of class action plaintiffs were using to sue the industry.

In what has been described as a landmark ruling by experts, the Quebec appeal court examined for the first time the merits of a class action regarding a drug manufacturer’s duty to warn. In dismissing a class action that alleged that Abbott Laboratories Inc. failed to provide sufficient information over the risks of a prescription drug, the appeal court provided critical guidance on the liability regime in Quebec for drug manufacturers facing product liability claims, confirmed for the first time the applicability of the learned intermediary doctrine in the province, and held that compliance with regulatory standards tends to indicate that drug manufacturers fulfilled its obligation to provide adequate information.

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